Collette Calls: Hot as the Sol(er)

As play begins Monday, Jorge Soler has 35 home runs for a terrible Kansas City club. He even threw in a stolen base Saturday night for the first time all season, and my fading Tout Wars team appreciated the combo meal. I rostered him for $9 in AL Tout in March, and he had a 357 ADP in mid-March. To date, he has earned $25 in a 15-team mixed league format according to our EAV Calculator and $27 in 12-team AL-Only formats.

When you visit Soler's StatCast page, the rankings portion on the upper right jumps out, and it should.

Each of those red dots represent at least a 90th percentile ranking in the category. One can get on a heater for a couple weeks, but it can be argued that Soler has been on this for two seasons now. 

2018 was an abbreviated season for Soler due to a toe injury that ended his season in mid-June. Our preseason fantasy outlook for Soler pointed out some of the improvements he made last year and hinted at some possibilities for this season:

Things appeared to be looking up for Soler before he suffered a toe fracture in mid-June, an injury which wound up costing him the rest of his season. He finished with a .265/.354/.466 line and his best wRC+ (123) since he notched a 148 mark in a tiny sample in 2014. Soler cut his strikeout rate from 32.7 to 26.8 percent while raising his ISO from .113 to .202 and keeping a high 10.9 percent walk rate. He at least rekindled the hope that he can be a productive MLB hitter, although defensively he may be best suited for DH. His career .249/.326/.424 slash line hardly turns heads, but it should be enough to earn consistent starts on a rebuilding Royals team. Despite a tough home park, he has enough raw power to eclipse 20 home runs in his age-27 season, and assuming he gets steady at-bats, there should be enough counting stats to justify a late-round pick in 15-team leagues

That 123 wRC+ season in 2018 has extended into this season as his current wRC+ for 2019 is a few points higher at 132. His walk rate has dropped one percentage point from last year while his strikeout rate is nearly identical to last year. The batting average has dropped six points, the on-base percentage 10 points, but the slugging percentage has risen 89 points this season. 

We noted that he had improved his strikeout rate from 2017 to 2018, but that was in a smallish sample size of 110 plate appearances. His current rate is similar to his 2016 rate with Chicago over 264 plate appearances, so the improved plate discipline is more rediscovered with consistent playing time more than anything else. Soler has displayed a double-digit walk rate now for four consecutive seasons, but it's the below the surface skills where the improvements can be seen.

We'll start with his O-Swing%:

Soler has gone on some runs in the past where he has showed more discipline at the plate, but none has been as long as the one he is currently on. The theory is simple: do not chase crap out of the zone and attack pitches in the zone with authority. If we take the same graph and add the line representing Soler's Hard Contact rolling average, things really get fun:

It is worth noting that one way to avoid bad pitches out of the zone is to take advantage of pitches in favorable counts. Eleven of Soler's 35 home runs this seasons have come off first pitches, which leads the league. 

He has been above the league average for hard contact since around June, and it should come as no surprise that Soler has led the league in Average Exit Velocity (min 100 batted ball results) in that time:

In a year where the ball continues to fly out of the yard at alarming rates, it is easy to write this off as just another guy taking advantage of the run environment. Soler's average distance on batted balls in 2019 is nearly identical to what he did in 2016. His average launch angle is lower than what he did that season. The difference now is the hard contact, particularly on fastballs this year:

The pattern begins to emerge for Soler; 11 first-pitch homers, and now we see 22 home runs off fastballs. He is selectively aggressive out of the box, but decidedly more disciplined within the count to lay off pitches that once got him out and wait to see if pitchers can throw non-fastballs for strikes when they have to. Pitchers clearly want to avoid fastball counts with Soler, but to do that, they either need to get him to expand his zone, or throw their non-fastballs for strikes. Only the best pitchers can do the latter, and there are not that many in the American League Central where Soler has feasted this year with 16 of his 33 home runs coming during divisional play. 

It is no wonder that Soler has done an increasingly better job of making contact within the strike zone this year compared to recent seasons where his rate has been mostly below the league average:

Thankfully, Kansas City has given Soler enough playing time in the outfield so he does not lose that eligibility next year during draft season. Had he lost that qualification, it would have made for interesting offseason talk about how high to draft a utility-only player who is showing signs of heading down the David Ortiz path of success in his late 20s. As it is, Soler has significantly improved his fantasy stock this season and has likely contributed to the second half surge of many league contenders around the country. This is not a solar flare — this is the real deal. Invest in Soler Power!